Scoutmaster Musings

What a great weekend! Scouts built a variety of snow shelters and all but 4 slept outside.

Two scouts drilled ice fishing holes then covered them with boards and piled their quinzee on top. They hollowed it out with the plan to fish all night, but they were asleep by 11pm. :-)

Two other groups found that the wind had piled snow almost 4 feet deep in the cattails so they dug into that instead of piling their own. The cattails were tough, but they succeeded.

One group found they could cut the packed snow into blocks and built part of their shelter with stacked bricks.

The rest built traditional quinzees on the ice.

I slept in a tent right out in the middle of it all just in case anything was needed in the night. There were no complaints of cold - everyone was comfortable all night.

It was too warm so no one got the Zero Hero patch, but it was in the single digits. Scouts discovered that some foods are better for winter cooking than others. Anything dry that needs to be hydrated is good. Anything with moisture in it (like fruit, juice, pancake batter, eggs) freezes solid. They also discovered that clean up is much more difficult and grease should be avoided.